


Arts & Crafts

by mizunoiro



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Comedy, Family, M/M, PV is a good dad, but still a villain, kiddy cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22710634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizunoiro/pseuds/mizunoiro
Summary: Professor Venomous is a man of many talents - minion management, sewing and photography, to name a few.
Relationships: Fink & Professor Venomous, Lord Boxman/Professor Venomous
Comments: 12
Kudos: 105





	Arts & Crafts

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks and hugs to the amazing [anonymousEDward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousEDward/pseuds/anonymousEDward) who volunteered to beta this fic! You're the best! <3

Professor Venomous sat at his desk and counted down the seconds of blessed silence after the noise from the last crash finally died down. Well, at least what passed for silence in the mechanical anthill that was the factory. Boxmore never sleeps, as its owner liked to boast.

“...three, two, aaand one.”

“Boooossssss!” A minty missile flew into his office and latched onto his shin with a boa constrictor’s grip that would have made his distant scaly cousins proud. “He is _so horrible,_ boss! Over one stupid chunk of cheese, what kind of adult does that! And he knows all cheese belongs to _me_! And and and when I gave him the nyah behind his back he turned around and gave me the nyah back and aargggghhh and the Shannons were laughing! They don’t even need to eat! I hate BoxBUTT and his roBUTTS!”

The tirade went on for a bit, generously sprinkled with the word hate and words ending in -butt that Cob never intended to end in -butt. Venomous sighed inaudibly and petted his minion’s head.

“There-there,” he said with all the saintly patience he could muster. “It happens. I think now would be a good time to go get some combat practice in the new gym, hm? Burn off all that energy.”

“I don’t wanna!” Fink wailed and hugged his shin in a death-grip. “He’s horrible! What do you even like about him! I don’t get it!”

“Come on, Fink, we’ve talked about this.” He sighed audibly this time and pried her off his leg long enough to resettle her in his lap. “He’s really not all that bad.” 

She glared at him. 

“Ok, _maybe_ , but he’s trying. He’s really sweet, too. For example, just the other day, he made a new sock-puppet video for his robots to enjoy while he’s busy, so they wouldn’t get lonely without him. You know, the one you set on fire?”

“It was an accident,” she said with an indignant pout.

“You downloaded it and recorded it on an actual VCR tape because they burn best. Boxman was shocked there was even a working VCR in Boxmore, but you found it.”

“Well it was a stupid video! It’s brainwashing! And creepy!” Fink waved her tiny fists around in a gesture so adorably reminiscent of Boxman that Venomous giggled and almost awww-ed at the sight. She glared at him again. Hard.

“Sooo,” he said nonchalantly and bounced her a bit on his knee, looking at the ceiling in mock contemplation. “This means I should probably scrap that idea of making a video of my own for you, eh? Seeing how it’s stupid and creepy...”

“WUT,” Fink squeaked and grabbed him by the labcoat lapels, hopping up and down on his lap in excitement. “Noooo nononono, yours will be way cooler! You- you should do it! Show Boxbutt how it’s done! And then I can show those robutts how much cooler you are than their dad! I can even help! Do you want my socks!?”

Venomous laughed and ruffled her mane.

“I have your socks,” he said, leaning a cheek on his hand. “I also have Boxman’s, Shannon’s, Ernesto’s, Darrell’s, and a pair of neon pink fishnet stockings that I think belong to Raymond. Laundry at Boxmore is an art, not an exact science.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Tell you what, I’ll think of something even better,” he said, dreading the idea of actually having to embarrass himself by making a video. “But only if you stop calling Boxman a… what do you call him? Boxbutt?”

“Fiiiine,” Fink groaned after a few moments of hard pouting. “But it’d better be something awesome!”

“It will be,” he promised, despite knowing full well that he’d regret it later in the day when he was tired and snappish and annoyed by some idiot villain and Fink’s cuteness wasn’t around to remind him why he’d agreed in the first place. “Now off to the gym you go. Give those crash-test dummies a good thrashing.”

“But you said no thrashing the robots,” Fink said slyly as he put her back on the ground.

“Not funny, Fink,” he rolled his eyes and sent her on her way.

When she was gone, he swirled in his chair once and looked absently at the ceiling, the potted ferns, his own portraits, and Fink’s rubber ducky below them. He stared at it for a few minutes, then rolled in his chair over to the shelf to take it.

“Sock-puppets, hm,” he murmured and gave the ducky a squeak.

\---

So thus, after a trip to his own room, the good samaritan Professor Venomous found himself with a basket of socks, among other things, doing rounds of everyone else’s rooms, ostensibly to return the misrouted items and collect his own wayward belongings. And, well, if he happened to borrow an item or two in the process, who could really say?

Perhaps the laundry service itself was to blame when he returned to his room with Shannon’s red wooly cardigan, Darrell’s top-secret cosplay sewing kit, Mikayla’s orange suede blanket and Raymond’s green feather boa in his basket.

Honestly, _none_ of these were even remotely weirder than the giant deep-sea isopod stuffed toy that he inexplicably found in the basket when he returned to his room.

\---

“Oh. Hey, Boxy. How’s… stuff?” Venomous asked as he returned a step back and took a better look inside Boxman’s workshop that he had almost passed by. 

“You know, PV, it occurs to me that I’m a terrible adult,” Boxman mumbled with his face buried in a heap of unfinished blueprints.

“That’s what being a villain generally means, yes,” he replied and went in, looking around the room filled to the brim with work projects in various stages of development, tools, instruments, knick-knacks, white- and digital boards, blankets and mugs.

“No, I mean, like,” Boxman waved a hand around in irritation and then sighed sadly “...Fink.”

“Fink? Is this about the cheese drama from this morning?” He flung an arm around his moping partner’s shoulders and squeezed. He couldn’t help it, Boxman was just too squeezable. Which was an inspiration, really. “I promise she’s forgotten all about it by now.”

“I keep treating her like one of mine,” Boxman said and turned his head just enough to look at the other man. “But she’s not. And she really, really hates me.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Venomous said brightly and fingered one of the Boxmore-logoed stress-balls buried under stuff at the edge of the worktable. “Well, not any more than she hates everyone else on the face of the planet, really. Perfectly normal for pre-teen villains, you know. And pre-teens in general.”

“But I’m an adult, and therefore I should, dunno, probably be doing something about it? _Someone_ has to, and it’s obviously not _her_ job to handle this, being a kid and all...” 

“I promise it’ll be taken care of, Boxy,” Venomous said and gave him a smooch. Boxman giggled, which led to another, longer smooch, which in turn led to a rather nice make-out session.

Venomous took his leave only after it was interrupted by a chorus of metallic giggling from the corridor. Nobody paid attention to the suspiciously round, stress-ball-shaped bulge in his coat pocket as he casually strolled out. Discussing suspicious bulges around the two older villains was just. not. _done_. 

\---

That night, the light in the professor’s lab burned all the way into the small hours of the morning while the unsuspecting Fink and Boxman peacefully slept in their respective beds.

\---

“Hey, Fink.” Venomous poked his head through the door and took a look around the room. “Are you ready for bed?” 

“Yes, boss!” She squeaked happily and ran over to him in her rat-patterned pajamas. “Will you read me a story!?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” he replied and knelt next to her. “Tonight, I have something special for you.”

“Oooh!” Fink’s eyes went all wide and shiny. “What is it?”

“Well, you remember how yesterday you said you wanted me to make you something more awesome than Boxman’s sock-puppets?”

“It’s a pretty low bar, but _yes_?” Fink’s eyes grew larger and shinier.

“And how you promised you’d stop calling him, erm, names, if I did that?”

“ _Yes_?” The shine intensity intensified. Intensely.

“Well, so I thought about what you’d like to have, and I remembered your favorite doll that, er, sadly perished in that Darrell-related incident.”

Fink’s expression turned an indescribable mix between awe and murderous rage.

“So I made you a new one,” Venomous hurried on, before he could get a lecture on Fink’s opinion on Darrell’s manners. “I know how much you love my lab coats and soft, squishy things, _and that secret is safe with me_ , so I thought that _this_ will be perfect for you.”

The stars in Fink’s eyes almost went supernova while Venomous took a gift-wrapped bundle out of his pocket.

Fink pounced on it even before the motion was complete and shredded the wrapping, taking out the hand-made doll by its arm.

“See? It even has an adorable tiny lab coat,” Venomous cooed and pointed to the small and very realistic white garment. “I made it from one of my own old ones. It hardly smells singed anymore. And that’s a stress-ball inside, so it’s nice and soft for you to hug. Come on, give it a squeeze.” He put his hands over Fink’s smaller ones and gave the doll a soft squeeze. “See? If you close your eyes, it’ll be like you’re hugging me.”

He smiled brightly and happily and surveyed proudly his creation and the stunned Fink who was still holding it.

“What do we say now, Fink?”

“Thank you, boss.”

“You’re welcome. Now, off to bed with you. It’s past your bedtime. Come on,” he said and scooped her up in his arms before depositing her in her nest-like bed. “Sleep tight, my adorable little embodiment of evil,” he chirped and gave her a small kiss.

He got up with a final ruffle of her mane, turned off the lights and closed the door behind him.

And Fink continued to lay and stare at the ceiling with eyes full of terror.

The doll was very well-made. By her boss. From his very own lab coat. It smelled of him. It was that infuriatingly perfect kind of yielding softness that made you want to squeeze the living daylights out of it. It was the perfect doll.

It was a doll… 

_...of Boxman_.

\---

Some time later, the stunned Fink finally came to life, screeched and threw the offending doll on the floor. It bounced, which made Fink’s eyes fixate on it, like the little predator she was.

It was an abomination unto Cob and all that was Corny. No, wait, it was an _embodiment_ of all that was corny.

Fink slid out of her nest and circled the doll at a safe distance. It lay there perfectly inoffensively. She sniffed. Inoffensive, and also smelling enticingly of her boss’s lab coats. Which it was partially made of.

She ventured closer on all fours and poked it once before she hissed at it and pounced on it.

“Ooooh, it’s so goooodddd,” she whined and squished and squashed it some more. “Oh no, I can’t stop squishing ittttt...” She sat on the floor and continued to knead the soft ball. Was _this_ why her boss liked Boxman so much!? Was the original as soft and squishable as the doll!?

“NO!” She screeched. “No! I hate it! It looks just like BoxBUTT! I hate it!” She jumped on it angrily once and then beat a speedy retreat behind a pile of plushies.

In a minute, she poked her nose from behind the barricade and stared at the doll. It was still lying on the floor, still looking at her with one red button and one googly eye, still smiling happily with its one tiny, tiny two-stitch snaggletooth.

“Why are you smiling at me, stupid thing,” she mumbled, absolutely not guiltily. She shuffled in her hiding place. “Come to think of it, Boxbutt does smile at me a lot...” _and it’s not so bad_. “No! I hate him, too!”

She hopped out of her fortress, kicked the doll and crawled back in her nest. She sat there for a few minutes, with her back towards the doll. And then, when she turned around to look at it, she was not-at-all teary-eyed.

“I’m not sorry, Ok!” she said to the doll and crawled out to go and pick it up. It continued smiling. It was soft. “Ok, I _am_ sorry,” Fink said and exploded in waterworks, hugging it to her chest. “I won’t be mean to you anymore, I promise! But, but- that will be our secret! And I won’t kick you!”

When she calmed down and was mostly done wiping her nose on her sleeves, she crawled back in her nest, this time with the doll tightly clutched to her chest. She played with it for a bit, finally paying attention to its green feather hair, its tiny arms, one whitish, one orange suede, its red cardigan button eye and happy smile until she got sleepy.

“He-heh, you’re kinda cute, actually,” she said as she pulled the blanket over the two of them and they finally fell asleep.

\---

“Fink? Is everything...” Venomous whispered and opened the door a little wider. A passing Jethro had told him that he had heard some screeching in Fink’s room, so the professor had come to check up on her. “Oh, my.”

He knelt next to his minion’s comfy nest and smiled. He had known, well, _hoped_ really, that Fink would warm up to his gift despite its shape eventually. But who would have thought it would be so soon.

He gently ran his fingertips through Fink’s mane and adjusted the blanket over her and her new favorite doll, by the looks of the grip she had on it. The picture she made, curled up like that, was completely worth the time he had spent on sewing the doll, the petty theft and the canceled meetings. 

Perhaps Boxman was on to something there. Kids, even if they were minions of various descriptions, maybe did need more of a… personal involvement in order to grow happily.

“Sweet dreams, my little mouse,” he whispered. “Sleep tight....”

And he took his phone out.

“Especially while I take some pictures of _this_ ,” he added while he did just that. “I’ll never have to hear a _single_ jab at Boxy _ever_ again. Not with blackmail material like this.”

Fink blissfully slept through it all, while Venomous finished his photoshoot and slithered silently out.

\---

“Hey, Boxy~~” Venomous chirruped as he excitedly plopped on the bed next to Boxman and immediately proceeded to wrap himself around the welcoming body heat. “Still worried that Fink hates you?”

“Erm. Hey, PV. Uhm. Yes, actually. Why? Did she complain again?”

“No, and she doesn’t hate you,” he said and took his phone out with a flourish. “Look here.”

“ _Ooooooohhhhhhh_...”

\---

Fink never figured out why Boxman suddenly started to buy her fancy cheeses and to look at her with disgustingly proud and shiny... parental? expression. He also mostly didn’t call her Stink.

Boxman never figured out why Fink suddenly stopped calling him butt-related names or protesting every time her boss was even remotely physically affectionate to him. It was a happy mystery.

Professor Venomous, a man of many talents - minion management, sewing, and photography, to name a few - just smiled happily and serenely at both of them and privately told them how fantastic they were at handling the other. All was well in Boxmore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are very welcome! Emoji, keyboard smashes and dinner menus are also welcome!
> 
> Also: Giant deep-sea isopod stuffed toys are a thing. They’re sold at Osaka Aquarium’s gift shop:   
> [ https://oshabe.com/2017/02/16/154/ ](https://oshabe.com/2017/02/16/154/)


End file.
